Diversity in leadership

By Dick Hughes  

JUNE 7, 2012 10:31 a.m. (1)

The Greenville Hospital System has been recognized as one of the nation’s top 50 companies for programs promoting diversity in leadership positions.

The ranking by Diversity MBA Magazine puts GHS at 49th in its annual list of “50 Out Front for Diversity Leadership: Best Places for Diverse Managers to Work.”

The hospital system is in the company of corporations such as Accenture, which is rated No. 1, and Bank of America, No. 2. Also in the top 50 are the likes of Verizon, Wal-Mart, GE, Google, IBM, Intel, General Mills, Hyatt, the University of Florida and Yale University.

The competitive ranking “benchmarks us against other health care organizations but also other industries across the board,” said Kinneil Coltman, GHS diversity director.

While GHS is pleased with the recognition, she said, the hospital has a “long way to go. The ultimate goal is to have more mirroring between our frontline staff and patient population and our leadership. We still have plenty of work to do, but we are on the path.”

According to GHS’ account of diversity in leadership – directors and above – 50 positions (7.6 percent) are held by African-Americans, seven (1 percent) by Hispanics and five by Asians (0.8 percent). Whites hold 598 of the jobs, or 90 percent. Seventy-one percent of GHS’ 660 leadership positions are held by women.

The share of leadership positions held by minorities is pretty much is what it was in 2003, when whites held almost 91 percent of those positions.

“We realize that’s not where we want to be,” said Coltman. One factor slowing more rapid diversification, she said, is the hospital’s low turnover in management.

While that’s a reality, she said, “we don’t want to use that as a cop-out, either.” Top management is committed to aggressively growing personnel internally for leadership and ensuring the pool of outside applicants for every leadership position includes qualified minority candidates, she said.

Some of the programs have been in place less than two years and are just beginning to show results, Coltman said. Recently, a minority who went through a leadership program was named a department director.

“We are trying to create a culture where a diverse group of individuals can see themselves in leadership roles because there are people who look like them in leadership, and there are programs that encourage their advancement.

“We also want to send a message that this is true equal opportunity. Whether you are white or a person of color, the message is clear: You’ve got opportunity for growth at GHS.”

Coltman said GHS puts a lot of impetus on its Emerging Leadership Program, now in its second year. “It is a competitive process whereby we select high potential employees who want to be groomed for the next level of leadership. It is nearly a yearlong program of education and development. They get projects to work on, access to senior leaders – exposure beyond their work unit.”

Realizing GHS cannot achieve diversity goals through internal development alone, she said the hospital created search and selection committees “charged with working their own professional contacts to identify candidates” to create a larger pool of applicants.

Michael Riordan, GHS chief executive officer, “has a goal to have at least one racial ethnic minority in the final round of interviews,” she said.

“I emphasize the final round of interviews as opposed to the final appointment because we do not want to put pressure on a hiring authority to hire a person because they are a minority. That’s not what we wanted to do. We wanted to focus on developing the pool.”

Coltman stresses that GHS’s diversity effort “is not an affirmative-action program. There are no quotas. It is just focusing our attention on developing a high-caliber diverse pool. When you get everyone organized around doing everything they can to get a high-caliber diverse pool, it not only makes you more diverse but also makes the quality of the candidates higher.”

On the medical side, in 2008, GHS created a Physicians Diversity Council to promote, recruit, retain and mentor underrepresented minority physicians and medical residents.

One of the “really simple” but effective things the hospital does is invite every physician applicant to meet with the council, Coltman said. “All kinds of people have taken us up on that offer. It sets the tone with the medical staff that there is a council that is working on diversity of the medical staff.”

“As a result, the number of African-American physicians, in particular, has more than doubled, going from seven in 2008 to 19 in 2012,” the hospital said in a summation of diversity programs.

Nearly 12 percent of the nursing staff is comprised of minorities, 8 percent of whom are African-Americans, and 9 percent of nurse managers are minorities – 6.7 percent African-American. “These are numbers in keeping with the demographics of licensed RNs in the Upstate,” GHS noted.

Riordan also “has made supplier diversity one of his five personal goals,” the hospital said. “As a result, GHS has increased its overall purchase activity with minority-, women- and veteran-owned vendors by more than 200 percent” to $4.7 million in 2007 to $10.3 million in 2011.

With 10,800 employees, GHS is the largest employer in Greenville County.

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Tim  - Diversity?   |2012-06-07 20:27:51 Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY White country and ONLY into White countries. The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them. Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY White country and ONLY White countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-Whites. What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries? How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem? And how long would it take any sane black m... Reply

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